Anybody see this coming? I definitely couldn't tell from his portrayal in the book...

Which raises the question, why do some people care so much? Even if they're concerned parents... there's no way they could call the books out on homosexual content, because there isn't any. Nobody could tell from the books' content that there was any hint of homosexuality. And if they could, then they're mature enough to handle it anyways. I mean... they might as well claim the books have sexual content... at least that can be inferred from the story, even if it's only by the fact that some characters have children.

I don't care about it, but it's completely forced. It's clear she's just trying to force a political agenda - if she actually built Dumbledore as a gay character, she might have, you know, put something about that in the story? If you ask me, he seems sort of a lone kind of a guy.

http://www.potterpuppetpals.com/bothering.html
That was like 2002.

I don't know... an author might think of a character in a way that s/he doesn't make immediately apparent in the book.

And with my thoughts about the writing process, I think many authors would be aghast at distorting one of their characters like that, away from their mental picture.

I disagree, especially when the change involves something they are passionate about.

why is it that every topic is currently a discussion between djbob and myncknm?

im not a professional book writer, but I've taken a few script writing classes. At this particular one, they basically had us go and write a script. The first step was to pick two characters...
I'm going to use Marvin and Alex as my examples.
Then you had to give each character 2 quirks that the audience didnt know... because it helps to write the story. Generally the point is to reveal the quirk by the end of the story but not necesarily...
so lets just say that Alex is extremely insecure, and turns to hurting people to make himself feel better.

When writing this script, I'm not gonna go have Alex jump in front of the camera and say "I'm insecure, but maybe having that guys iPhone will make me feel better!" and then have him run over and steal some poor kids iPhone... but rather I'll make him put on the "Mean-bully" face of someone who's insecure and thinks that making other people insecure will make him feel less so... (as a friend of mine would add: "his way of looking at things is not the correct one")

Ok that worked better with the script i was writing in the class, but do you get the idea? It's possible that she just used his homosexuality as a defining characteristic (not saying that it is but...) and so she wrote his character with that in mind so as to have a deeper, more interesting character instead of a bland John Doe.

Either that or shes got a very smart marketing mind and realizes that if she announces something like this then people are going to go read the books to find references to his homosexuality... and possibly buy them if they havnt already. I mean, maybe you think that would work better if it was Harry she was talking about, but still, pretty smart if you ask me: take an important background character who you dont know much about but who plays a pivitol role in the story...

This is different from your example. In fact, your example further proves my point. The point of keeping something hidden is to allow the reader to figure it out for themselves - however, absolutely no one (besides the maker of the Puppet Pals miniseries) was able to make this conclusion. There are no actions Dumbledore takes in the book that would suggest him being gay. At all. You had Alex stealing an iPhone, but nothing similiar can be found in the Harry Potter series.

I think that she never really envisioned Dumbledore as gay, but devided to make him gay to prove a point.

You can't really tell much about Dumbledore at all from the book. Except maybe that he's a powerful, old, wise wizard. Not much of his character was ever revealed.


Not necessarily. I find that usually the really talented authors and artists don't actually plan this kind of stuff out. You can analyze paintings and poems and find certain devices, but the really good artists didn't even know that they were using those techniques. They just did it out of instinct.

Rowling claimed that she always thought of Dumbledore was homosexual, but didn't want to put it in the book. That's understandable. You don't necessarily want to bring something like that into a story, especially one meant for children.

I agree with djbob on this one. There was absolutely no reason for JK Rowling to make this known unless she was trying to push a liberal agenda, which I believe is the reason for this stupid revelation in the first place. Authors generally only reveal outside information about a character in a book after it has been published if they were clarifying a personality trait that some people are already beginning to suspect and point out. How does having Dumbledore being gay affect the story at all? It doesn't!

And if she truly wanted him to be homosexual from the start, she would have put in clues about it in the stories. There were no clues, apart from the fact that he had an unusual fondness for Harry and wanted him alone in his office all the time.


Of course she claimed that; it would be stupid of her to admit that this is a pathetic grab for more publicity for Harry Potter. Anyway, what reason could she possibly have for wanting Dumbledore to be homosexual? Different character traits? Unlikely, considering that (as you said before) all we know about him is that he's powerful, old, and wise. None of those traits have any bearing on the homosexuality of a person.

But does an author have to make apparent every trait that s/he knows the character to have?

No, but in a seven-year chronicle such traits are bound to come up.

Like i said, the example i used was not the one i was working with... it was trying to apply the principles to a character i had already written...
and maybe nothing shows him as homosexual, but does anything specifically show that he's heterosexual?

Where did you hear this?

Radio and cable news.

He dances with women, not men, at each of the winter balls at Hogwarts.

That's not really good evidence. If this were a scientific experiment, you'd try to hold some things constant. Things such as societal and customary influences. You know... as a high-profile respectable character, he really doesn't need a ton of OMG HEZ DAH GAY gossip going around. Or distract from the ceremony by attracting attention to himself like that.

Plus this is a children's series. Stuff like that you don't put directly into a children's series.

I know what this conversation is going to boil down to. myncknm's going to say that not all gay people are evidently gay, and I'm going to say they are. And we'll just argue about that. Forever. It'll be pointless. Meh.

You're always arguing the point that individual variation makes it useless to generalize certain traits with people, right?

How about variation within the group of homosexual people then?

...I am? Can you be more specific?

it really does depend... ive heard girls say their homo in the same sentence that they're saying the guy who was sitting next to them on the bus was hot...

and do you always dance with someone you like at a dance? I mean.... ok hopefully you get it cause i dont know how to put it better